Splashed with color and nearly plastered in pictures, Briana Lanktree's bedroom is a testament to her full though still-young life - paper lanterns used as a night light, a hula-girl clock that dances as it ticks, images and mementos of places she's been and people she loves.

But down the hall is a symbol of what's consuming the sixth-grader's life right now.

Propped on the living room hearth, a hand-drawn thermometer - thick black ink against bright yellow poster board - is marked along the way with different dollar amounts. Topping out at $30,000, the gauge to date is filled in almost to the $15,000 line.

Briana, 12, a student at Richardson Middle School in Torrance, is raising money for some friends half a world away, in the cardboard shacks of Mfuleni Township, South Africa, where she spent two weeks last spring.

"Their houses are made of cardboard and metal and tin, with no plumbing or electricity and some of them have newspaper for walls," Briana recalled recently. "At school they sit on the floor, and they don't even have books."

"It's sad in a way just to realize that we have everything and they don't," she added. "They live so differently, but they don't know that. They seem very joyful and happy and just very excited."

Aiming to outfit Mfuleni Elementary with safety fencing, supplies, a playground, student uniforms and more, Briana has been fundraising furiously for nearly a year.

From bake sales to lemonade stands to donations obtained going door to door in her hilly Torrance neighborhood, she's been amassing cash by any means possible.

"We've done everything except turn people upside down and shake the change out of their pockets," joked her mom, Kristie Lanktree.

The pair visited Mfuleni together, one of just five families selected last year for the inaugural trip of UCLA's "Global Buddies" program, a cultural exchange and education effort of the university's Global Center for Children and Families.

Along with a new crop of Global Buddies, the Lanktrees will return to South Africa next month - they leave March 20 - where every penny earned will be wired by UCLA and put to work on the fixes they envisioned.

"We'll take whatever we've raised and stretch it as much as we can - get that safety fence built, do any needed repairs, get them all the supplies we can afford," Kristie said. "We're not asking for handouts or even long-term support - just for a little help to get the school up and running."

Among their top priorities is to secure uniforms, which run about $50 apiece, for the 20 to 30 kids in the township without them. They're required at Mfuleni Elementary, which provides a free education and two hot meals every day to all who attend.

"The kids who can't afford uniforms can't go to school," Kristie said. "They sit every day and watch the school kids walk by and you just think, `If only they could get an education it would be a way out of the cycle of poverty that they're in."'

Chiming in eagerly, Briana added, "Kids here, we think school is stupid, or that it's a pain. There they think school is this awesome opportunity to learn and some sweet thing that someone has given them. It's a gift."

Ask Briana what she thinks it means to be a Global Buddy, a citizen of the world, and you'll get a response that rings well beyond her dozen years of life.

"That you should help others and be friendly to others and appreciate what you have," she said. "Everyone should help everyone, so that people get it's not always about them. It's about everyone, and we should all be excited to share what we have and share our joy."

Diane Flannery, co-director of UCLA's Global Center and creator of Global Buddies, characterized Briana as "sort of like my wildest dream come true for the program."

"Watching her blossom, it's exactly what I wanted to see happen," Flannery said of her hopes for the effects the program has on participants. "The age Briana's at is such a critical time in becoming who you are, and it's beautiful to see that this is going to be part of it. She's a special young woman."

The Global Buddies program was borne out of research that Flannery said revealed "middle- and upper-income kids here, kids who have everything laid before them, who are just not happy" as well as "in Africa, kids who have nothing and are totally happy."

"That was very interesting to myself and my colleagues," Flannery said. "We started wishing kids in L.A. could see kids in Africa, where they struggle, but they're happy."

Now in its second year, Global Buddies next month will shepherd a new group - seven families this time - to Mfuleni, which sits outside Cape Town. Among their primary service projects will be to build the playground that Briana is helping to fund.

"It's phenomenal, when you give people a chance, what they can do," Flannery said. "You develop a platform and see what people do with it and, so far, the Lanktrees are the role model for what people can do with it."

And they're not finished yet.

Today, Briana is speaking at the Pacific Unitarian Church in Rancho Palos Verdes to make her pitch and, with her mom's help, to pass the hat.

Next Sunday, she'll preside over what Kristie calls their "grand finale fundraiser" - which also happens to be their first actual fundraiser - at Coyote Cantina in Redondo Beach, hoping for an 11th-hour influx of donations before going back to Mfuleni and putting the money to work.

Briana, a 5-foot-8 volleyball player who also runs track, loves swimming and enjoys picking up trash - "for the Earth and stuff," she said - is abuzz with anticipation over returning to the place she and Kristie both credit with changing their lives.

The Lanktrees have become diligent about conserving water and recycling; they traded in their SUV for a Prius and even started a worm garden to cut back on their trash.

"The worms eat all our paper and our junk mail, egg cartons, tea bags - you wouldn't believe what they eat," Briana related through a wide, incredulous smile, before explaining how her whole mind-set has changed since becoming a Global Buddy.

"Kids here think they need cell phones and fancy clothes and TVs and computers. They need everything fancy," she said. "But in Africa they just think that everything they already have is nice for them and they're happy with that.

"They just need family and friends."

HOW TO HELP

The fundraiser at Coyote Cantina will be held next Sunday in two sessions, from noon to 2p.m. and again from 2 to 4p.m.

For more information on the Global Buddies program at UCLA, or to get on the waiting list for the spring 2009 trip, visit the Global Center for Children and Families at www.gccf.ucla.edu or call Cynthia Sherrill at 310-794-6256.